There is an increasing tendency to commercialize applications that recognize the ambient environment of a vehicle using a camera installed in the vehicle. Among them, it is expected to apply such applications for a preventive safety technique that prevents an accident beforehand using a recognized object and for a vehicle control technique aiming at autonomous driving. A recognition technique used for vehicle control needs to have high reliability.
For example, in light source environment in which a bright region and a dark region coexist in a camera viewing angle, such as nighttime and backlight, a dynamic range of a camera is insufficient so that over exposure or under exposure occurs, which may become a factor that causes an object not to be recognizable in an image. PTL 1 discloses a technique aiming at implementing detection of an oncoming car or the like by observing an over exposure region caused by a headlight of the oncoming vehicle and setting an exposure amount appropriate for recognition in the over exposure region on consideration of being a bright region.